Discussion

Apple: enough is enough

davidcollantes: > "Suffice it to say, I have ordered a Linx PC, which will replace the Mac."That was a sentence uttered with the misplaced confidence of a man who had no idea his real troubles were only just beginning.

tonymet: Consent Prompt Fatigue and overload is a serious problem. To perform the most basic task across my iPhone + watch I need to suffer half a dozen consent & pin prompts. Often at the most sensitive and difficult times: it's raining, I have gloves, I'm juggling a power tool or something dangerous. My devices continue pin prompt me every 30 seconds like I'm holding the Nuclear football.We used to respect that credential/prompt fatigue resulted in worse security, then the lawyers got their way, engineers / product managers conceded, and now users are punished with useless prompting every 10 seconds.The only way forward will be for some a-hole product managers to push back on this nonsense.

manoDev: We’re past the golden age of personal computing, the money isn’t there anymore. I’m afraid we’ll have to get used to bad software for a while.

ezst: Or, you know, use software developed by humans, for human consumption, aka community software, the stuff you generally associate with open source!

hex4def6: The author explicitly shows how in Apple's walled garden, even that had hurdles that have been put up, 'for security'.

dotdi: Several ideas from this blog post are factually wrong.Additionally, I cannot confirm the more subjective ideas - and I've been running Macbooks for almost 20 years, and specifically working with Python both for hobby, for research, professionally, for cybersecurity, etc.I have an old 2013 laptop that is the "couch machine". It still works adequately. No issues with sleep/wake. Time machine outlasted the external HDD it was running on. I am writing this on an M1 Max, which will be 5 years old this year, and I hope I get 5 more years, it's just that good.

uniqueuid: It's interesting how the sentiment around Apple has turned, for the first time in what feels like 20 years.The true reason is, as the recent norwegian report quipped: We love our tech, but it betrays us - that's an abusive relationship.Consent prompts are a band-aid for users being exploited: They are not fixing the root but covering it with legal painkillers.But the only true remedy is actually feeling in control of and empowered by your device - a vision that Apple once at least promised, but now has less and less legitimacy of heralding.

taurath: > feeling in control of and empowered by your device - a vision that Apple once at least promisedLegitimately, when? I got started on an Apple II, I used the puck mouse without right click, I watched people buy the insanely costly hardware that was always integrated and you couldn’t service yourself. Windows was always more open than Mac - people just didn’t use Linux because it required you to know how things worked under the hood.Just like the rest of large technology companies, and the economy as a whole, we are all being squeezed for every drop. Eventually the well will run dry, there’s already practically no more data to pull, and the apps will get shittier as revenues need to keep going up, and all the pillars of tech will fall over like a tree hollowed out by pests.

retired: > people just didn’t use Linux because it required you to know how things worked under the hood.This is how Windows feels to me now. The very first interaction with Windows when I buy a new computer is to do Shift+F10 and type away some magical terminal commands to get it working.That I have to use the terminal to get Windows operational after unboxing my new device is insanity.From my notes:> net.exe user 'username' 'password' /add> net.exe localgroup Administrators 'username' /add> cd oobe> msoobe.exe && shutdown.exe -r

hex4def6: Linux can fool you into that sense of security for a long time. But there will come a point where the facade crashes down.Maybe it's plugging your laptop into an external projector, or getting to sleep and wake correctly without the WiFi driver segfaulting, or maybe it's trying to get HDR working, or audio routing or...

ezst: Or not. I've been using Linux since 2006, initially for fun and giggles, and then by choice, and nowadays it's without a doubt the superior alternative. My successive employers forcing me through Windows gave me the "privilege" of daily-driving Windows at work and seeing up-close everything that Microsoft has produced since XP. That show-stopping 15min drivers installation because you plugged-in some headset or mouse? That's Windows-only. That screen positioning that can't be remembered consistently between work and office? Ditto. That nefarious hours-long unskippable OS-upgrade? Same. That feeling of losing your mind because you configured something in a specific way and now it's gone? Oh yeah, that's Windows overriding your user-preferences behind your back, just because. Your playlist blasting in the open space? Apparently that's a Windows feature of your bluetooth headphones switching off (even when they were not playing because your playlist was paused). That wifi that you have to re-enter the credentials once a month or so? Yeah, Windows suspend/resume once again crapped and that somehow caused network amnesia. And that's just the hardware-ish stuff. The permanent nagging, upselling, silly distractions, adverts and overall lack of polish and stability is nothing new in software-land.I cannot remember when I last had a network, bluetooth, audio or driver issue with Linux on my ThinkPad. I legitimately cannot. But I can assure you I that had 3 of those in the last couple weeks alone on my work's HP elitebook with W11 24H2.

liquid_thyme: There is no excuse for poor software when you only have to support a tiny number of hardware variations.

frizlab: There is no excuse for writing a page about faults in the software with that much errors.

pantulis: Back in the day, in Operating System Design class I dared to suggest the teacher that for some obscure inode related problem the system should ask the user what to do.His answer was "We are designing an operating system, not a messaging solution".This was circa 30 years ago of course, and the essence and complexity of what an OS is today is different, but the idea still resonates in my head every time macOS deploys one of these prompts at me.

jjav: > I have an old 2013 laptop that is the "couch machine". It still works adequately.Sure, because it is from when Apple still was good.I am writing this right now on a 2014 Mac Mini (running 10.13). Works perfect! Great machine.The newer stuff, not so much.I have a 2021 15"? MacBook Pro, highest end very expensive, where the battery randomly goes into rundown and drains in no time, some days it is fine. This one also can't sleep, so must do a full shutdown if I need to close the lid for more than ~10 minutes. If I close it and put it on my backpack for longer, it heats up like an oven and drains the battery. The USBC ports only work half the time at best. It's been like this since 2023, so it really only lasted two years.I have a 2022 13" MacBook Pro where the screen is completely dead and the trackpad no longer clicks. Using it as a desktop with an external monitor and mouse, but what a disappointment. Made the mistake of buying it without Apple Care shakedown money, so can't be fixed. (Apple wanted ~$1500 to fix it, obviously not worth it).I have a 2023 MacBook Air which is my current portable. Works ok for now, but the USBC ports are super flaky. External monitors work on a whim, sometimes, or not, which is massively annoying.Apple quality is just pretty terrible in the 2020s. When this MacMini dies, I'm going back to a Linux desktop.

jjav: > Linux can fool you into that sense of security for a long time. But there will come a point where the facade crashes down.All my laptops through multiple jobs have been running Linux starting in 1994 (way before the "Year of the Linux desktop") with zero problems. I switched to Mac laptops in 2012 only because that's what work at the time gave me. In later years accumulated many Mac laptops but quality has been goind down fast. Next time around I'm back to Linux because can't take it anymore.

whynotmaybe: >I live and work in a multi-lingual environment, and regularly switch between the German and English keyboard layout. Lately, the keyboard layout no longer sticks. It resets to English when I press shift. Sometimes it does work, sometimes it doesn't.Yeah, windows is also the king for that.Almost every update reactivates the shortcut to change locale, even though I've removed it.And they even added a new shortcut to change locale : Win+space.So as I'm always juggling between mac and windows, Win+space is sometimes pressed instead of ctrl+space and then all of a sudden my keyboard is switched to another language.Don't worry, there's a fix ! Modify all the installed language, add your keyboard layout and remove all the others. So now you can also have a an English locale with a non English keyboard layout.

wink: I was recently made aware you should be able to use Powertoys (as maybe the only way) to remove the innate win+space shortcut and override it with e.g. your launcher.This works... it shows the launcher. But I still find myself with the wrong language selected every couple days, I have a feeling it does not fully work when I use win+space inside an RDP connection or.. somewhere else.Mildly infuriating if you can't just disable OS-level shortcuts.

wink: The permissions thing regarding Accessibility or Network Access is the worst. Half the popups make no sense (even to a programmer) and it just feels clunky. (Bonus point: why is a tiling window manager or anything controlling windows or controls even sorted under Accessibility?)I recently wanted to control some things with a MIDI device (mostly hardware mute for Slack/Teams etc) and need AppleScript for that.But of course `osascript` is a different thing than the `Script Editor` and if you want to add a binary in the dialog you click the + button as described in the manual but of course it does not give you a way to select /usr/bin or /bin - just the view with Applications etc. Showing "hidden" files or dirs is easier on Windows and that says a lot.(I suppose there must be a way, but I gave up finding it and just exported my stuff as an App in ~/Applications, I can add those.)

drcongo: Almost everything in this article is wrong, this person shouldn't be allowed near a computer.

jclardy: Yeah - the sleep/wake one is crazy to me. I have had numerous mac's and windows machines over the last 20 years as well and Sleep/Wake has been perfectly consistent on the mac. In 2026 on year old hardware from Microsoft (Surface Pro) I have regular issues with waking from sleep, or more commonly, the battery will just be completely dead in the morning when it had a full charge the night before.The python complaint I get, but it is because they ship an old python version with the OS and you have to work around that to install a different version.Security settings can be set via the Settings app and don't require the terminal like the author stated. They can be changed via the terminal, but the golden path is just tapping a button in settings to allow the unauthorized app and typing in your password. Granted - it isn't obvious, and I only know this because over the years as notarization was added the dialogs became slowly less helpful in guiding you to the right spot, I think now in Tahoe they don't even make a mention of where you should go to allow it.

queenkjuul: My work MacBook pro refused to wake from sleep exactly as described in the article on average twice per week until i convinced my boss to buy me a PC